


five times skye doesn't sleep

by dianaagron



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e06 A Fractured House, F/M, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Skye Feels (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Skye-centric (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), actually a lot of hurt and not much comfort, just kinda, kinda sorta 2x06 fix it fic, self harm tw, slight self harm tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-24 14:43:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2585102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dianaagron/pseuds/dianaagron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time it’s night and most of them are asleep. It’s the day after he tells her he was only going to tell her the truth and those words echo in the back of her mind, added to a thousand other thoughts that keep her awake at night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	five times skye doesn't sleep

**Author's Note:**

> My first Skyeward work! Hope you like it, english is not my mother language, so I apologize in advance if something doesn't make sense. Thanks for reading!

The first time it’s night and most of them are asleep. It’s the day after he tells her he was only going to tell her the truth and those words echo in the back of her mind, added to a thousand other thoughts that keep her awake at night.

She’s come to a habit of working out as much as she can, only with a few little breaks, that way she finds herself exhausted by night, with no strength left to wonder about things she still can’t explain. And May is happy about her behavior, so there is that.

Problem is, the strategy doesn’t seem to work after close encounters with him. Because it has been already a day and she still can’t remove the sound of his voice in her head. She doesn’t want it, it’s distracting and painful. And it makes her feel like all the efforts he has made in the past six months in order to shut him out of her mind, to channel her rage so that she could be more efficient in their missions, were nonexistent.

The Skye of a year before would’ve turned on the music so loud it would’ve covered up every unwelcome thought, and she would’ve started dancing too, and realizing that that girl is so far gone doesn’t do anything but make her even more mad than how she already is.

But she stays still, her eyes open staring at the ceiling of what is now her room, so grey and plain and empty because that’s exactly how she feels, how she’s felt since the aftermath of the mess.

And she wishes she could’ve been cold and still like that when she was in front of him earlier, but what’s more important is that she wishes she didn’t even let the possibility that he was really telling her the truth graze her mind, because he lied to her, to all of them, and he’s a murderer and  _look what he did to Fitz_.

So she has to fight the urge of getting up and storming off the room to get to his vault and it’s so hard because all she wants to do is scream and kick everything she finds in her way and tell him that it’s not fair, it’s not fair that he treated her like that, it’s not fair that he still has the power of making her so weak and insecure.

She doesn’t, though. She checks her heart rate (she never takes the monitor off her wrist) and she only curses because it’s too high and again, it’s not fair that he can hold so much power against her.

Needless to say, that night she doesn’t sleep.

 

**

 

The second time it’s an instant and she’s in front of him, only the invisible barrier dividing them, and there’s one look and she feels lost and she’s about to tell him what she had to do earlier that day, because for a moment there somehow she saw her SO behind that beard and scars and not the traitor who decided on his own will to kill innocent people.

And maybe he catches her fragility because his eyebrow flickers a little and the next thing she knows her heart rate is going up once again and her father is alive and she’s storming off the vault.

Once again he hears him say that he’ll only tell her the truth and how can she not believe him now? How can she not when her whole life she’s tried to find a way to her real parents and now she is so close to the truth? But what do you do when the truth comes from the person who has the power to destroy you with just one single look?

It’s night and she’s sitting on the floor of an empty corridor down in the basement, her back pressed against the cold surface on the wall and Koenig is the first one to spot her. His face helps her remember what she really feels, and just like every other time she meets him, she can’t help but see in his face the ghost of a pale bluish color and red scars that were imprinted on the body of his murdered twin that she found hidden in the storage closet what feels like ages ago.

That’s enough to stabilize her heart rate.

 

**

 

The third time she’s still not sleeping and she decides that it’s no use sitting on her bed pretending that she’s trying to because  _clearly_  she isn’t, she’s just raging and shivering and truth is she’s afraid of closing her eyes because when it’s not Donnie it’s Koenig and really it’s a cycle that doesn’t seem to have an end.

So she acts on impulse, because that’s what she does at night when nobody can watch her (they can - she knows they do), she lets part of herself be that girl again and now she’s wrapping white cloths around her hands and hitting the punching ball, conscious that she’s being careful of keeping her hands up, like somebody who is now long gone once told her.

She doesn’t come down boxing often. Actually, she hardly does it anymore, mainly because that’s not really May style but deep down the real reason is concerning the memories that doing so brings back. She doesn’t admit it though, not even to herself, especially because one time she’d found Coulson watching her and she doesn’t want to experience that knowing and piercing look again, having in mind how dirty it made her feel.

Maybe the worst part is that it’s night and she doesn’t have a mission to keep her focused on something other than loss and betrayal and guilt, or maybe it’s because she tries so hard to keep all those thoughts out of her mind during the day that they come back with an incredible force when she’s all alone, and she’s not strong enough to hold them back, not when she’s sweaty and trembling and every punch is one step closer to finally feel numb.

In those times, she does wish he was there to hold the punching bag.

 

**

 

The fourth time she’s in tears because there’s no strength left to fight it back. It feels like she’d been bottling up too much for too long because it all crumbles down on her once she’s in her room, her head in her hands and her knees on the ground.

You can’t expect her to be fine, not when she killed a boy without a second thought, not after finding out that her father is a monster. He killed people, just like  _he_ did. Was it true, then? Was it true that she was the one bringing death wherever she went?

She just rocks back and forth following the sound of herself sobbing, and she doesn’t even care if they can hear her, it’s not like they’re going to come inside anyway. She feels dirty as she rubs her bare hands, the heart rate monitor forgotten in a corner of her bed. She bites her lip as hard as she can in an attempt not to cry out loud because well,  _that_  would probably be the reason Coulson needs to come to her, and in a flash she understands what  _he_ felt when they put him behind the barrier.

She understands him and she is disgusted because that doesn’t do anything but remind her of how much alike the two of them are, how much she still relies on him even when he’s gone, when he’s somebody she doesn’t know. She’s disgusted and hurt because she can’t bring herself to hate him completely and blindly, not even when he tells her that they never brainwashed him, when he has the guts to tell her that it was his choice to leave Fitz and Simmons to die in the pit of the ocean.

All she feels is a burning sensation in her stomach, like something is eating her alive from the inside and all she can do is hold on to herself, sinking her nails in the skin of her arms and somehow she feels better but not better  _enough._

Maybe she should run faster as well.

She’s so tired when she surrenders, now lying completely on the floor, and his face it’s the last thing she sees before falling asleep.

 

**

 

He looks at her like she’s the sun and that’s what makes it impossible to bear, because deep down she knows that’s exactly what she feels every time she goes to talk to him. Like she can finally breathe after having been underwater for hours and hours.

But she masks it, she uses her words like knives that cut him and he is there, taking it all without fighting back because that’s what he deserves. Her ribcage traps a monster her head doesn’t acknowledge, that monster is screaming, is trying to reach him to tell him to react, to try to escape because it – she – can’t see him going numb. That’s not who he is.

(You don’t know who he is.)

That fifth time the monster wins, and she lets him take her to places where she wasn’t supposed to wander, just as Coulson had warned her about not slipping off track and staying on mission earlier that same day.

Maybe she is still the same girl she once was; she tells herself that this is just her breaking the rules to get back at Coulson for interrupting her conversation with him that morning, that’s the reason why she’s letting him tell her about her father and how he lost his mind when Hydra agents tried to get her. 

“Everything he did, Skye, he did because he loved you.”

She takes her eyes off of him because she can’t stand looking at him while he tells her.

“And I can’t fault him for that.”

She feels something crack inside of her together with the urge to hold back hot tears, and when she turns to him to look right in his eyes it’s there again, that look of awe and complete surrender that he wears whenever she’s around, and then she’s playing him again, taking out every single notion he knows because that’s what she does, she hurts him purposively in order to get what she wants.

But that’s the thing, she doesn’t know what she really wants. She doesn’t want to know her mother died, she doesn’t want to let go of the idea that if her father is still alive maybe her mother is too, and that’s when she finally lets go, letting small, shy tears wet her eyes. And he just stands still, she can see it in his eyes that he’s pleading her not to cry, but he doesn’t dare say a word because the risk of her storming off like all the other times is too high and having her like that is better than not having her at all.

Once the monster takes over there’s not much she can do, it takes her head with a force that’s not human and there’s no going back. She hears his words like a distant echo, she focuses on his still hands. Hers are trembling when he says it, he says “together” and that’s about all it takes to crack her completely.

She blames it on his damaged smile, on the shadow of a bruise on the corner of his forehead, on the beard that now covers the skin she caressed and kissed a million years ago, back when he was a good man. She blames on his brown round eyes, it’s his eyes that make her believe in everything he says, ever since the beginning.

Eyes that are looking at her while her fingers brush the tablet screen with an unstable touch. The barrier is gone as soon as he says “I promise you”.

Neither of them move, he’s probably too shocked by what she just did – she was throwing knives at him just a moment before, how is that even possible – and she is too shaken up by her own sudden decision that it’s impossible to move forward, even now that nothing divides them anymore.

When she looks up in his eyes, she finds the same hope of a moment before that breaks her into a million pieces because now she can’t stop hearing whispers all around her reminding her that it’s not gonna last.

“Skye?”

It’s nothing but a feeble breath, his eyes all over her with a piercing look, as though he’s trying to read into her. She is frozen. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do now, so she does what she feels most natural.

She goes to him.

She takes two unsteady steps towards him and stops just right in front of him, now feeling the heat he radiates and the breaths he takes. His eyebrows arch upwards ever so slightly and his lips open into what looks like the ghost of a smile. But he remains still.

“You’re being transferred, Ward.”

His face cracks and it’s like she can hear the sound of a million glasses break, the coldness of freezing water washing over the both of them. She had to tell him the truth, she owes him at least that – a part of her reminds herself that it’s not true, she doesn’t owe him anything, not even a single word after what he’s done, but the other part shatters at his look. And he still does nothing.

“Your brother wants you in his custody.”

For a second, she swears she’d seen just the slightest hint of pure fear color his dark irises, then, just as it came, it’s gone. He still uses the soft, delicate tone to talk to her, not stepping an inch closer to her, probably still scared of the possibility that she could leave. And he senses that something’s wrong, he always does, he always knows when she’s not okay.

“Why are you telling me this, Skye?”

She isn’t supposed to say anything, but then again, she isn’t supposed to be down in his vault with the cameras off when Coulson is out in the first place. There’s a thrill into realizing old habits die hard, and a spark lightens her eyes as she explains the plan to him, a plan he can improve if he just  _did something_.

She’s scared he won’t run for his life because of some stupid promise he thinks he’s made to her and she wants to scream at him to just go when the time comes because she can’t hate him if he keeps acting like that. But he doesn’t do anything, he stands there looking at her, so close to her she can remember vividly what happened the last time they were  _that close_  and that’s a road she doesn’t want to go down.

He was safe there in their basement, they weren’t gonna hurt him. But now, now she didn’t know. When Coulson had told her they were giving him to his brother she felt scared for his life, her monster wanted to deter her director, but everything else in her just stayed still, mirroring the actions of the man in front of her at that very moment, because the biggest part of her still felt like what she was doing was wrong.

But it’s not going to last, she hears once again, and that’s the final straw. She takes the final step and the crushes against him, her hands gripping the fabric of his worn out unfitting dark shirt, never looking into his eyes because if she does she’ll realize that she’s not supposed to be so close to him, it doesn’t do any good to her or to him or to anybody else. There’s a reason if they all kept her away from him at all costs, letting her go down to his vault only to get intel. Then she finally lets out some words.

“I don’t know when Coulson is gonna be back.”

She holds on his shirt for dear life, feeling rage mixed to fear building up as the seconds pass by.

“Please, Ward.”

It’s a whisper, but he’s close and he hears it. It’s the first time she lets herself sound so vulnerable and it’s no wonder why she’s seizing his shirt that hard.

That’s when he moves.

His touch is so light she’s left wondering if he really did brush her skin. He wraps his hands around her wrists, freeing himself from her grip and gently pushing her arms down to her sides. Her eyes follow their movements, watching as he releases his hold and with one hand takes her smaller one, tangling their fingers together and squeezing.

It’s feeble, but she squeezes back, her eyes still fixed down on their fingers now entwined. His other hand is now creeping up, up until it’s not in her sight anymore, but she feels it now under her chin, gently hinting her to look up. She still can’t bring herself to move and he doesn’t force her, leaving her chin in order to caress the skin of her cheek.

She closes her eyes and lets her head rest against his hand, then eventually on his chest.

It’s not much. It’s not right. Yet she can’t find the will of letting go of him and leave the vault, return to her room and act like she’d never been down there. This time she blames it on the way his big hand closes over her small one, on his closeness, on how he makes her feel at home, even for just a couple of instants. She blames it on the fact that for a moment there she completely forgets everything that has happened in the last year.

When she looks up, his eyes are already on her, taking as much of her as he can get in those last few moments. They both know they don’t have much time left.

“We can find your father, Skye. Together, you and me.”

He tries, but he already knows it’s too much. She only shakes her head.

“They can’t know. Just escape, Ward, come up with one of your plans.”

She’s tired now, so she doesn’t even try running away from his deep stare. Instead, she leans on it, resting her head once again on his chest, listening to the sound of his steady heartbeat. She doesn’t even bother checking her heart rate monitor, already knowing the highlighted numbers would be way up higher than 61.

He wraps his arm around her shoulders, keeping her close to him for another moment, closing his eyes and burying his mouth in her hair, leaving a silent kiss on top of her head.

“I promise you.”

It’s not right, it’s not enough, but it’s only then that her monster finally calms down.

 

**

 

(She hears him tell Coulson the morning after that he will keep his promise. She’s hiding behind some trucks because, according to her director, she’s not supposed to be there. But the thing is, old habits die hard.)


End file.
